Considering Your Base Color With Highlights And Lowlights

The term "base color" refers to the color of your hair, whether natural or dyed, before highlights, lowlights or any additional color is applied. To get the look you're after, it's important for your colorist to achieve the correct base color first. It also plays a big part in the kind of highlights that look best.

Blondes have more flexibility in terms of different shades when it comes to highlights, because the colors blend more seamlessly. For those with fairer skin, golden and honey highlights are best.

For dark hair, don't go more than three shades lighter than your current base shade. Most brunettes look best with rich butterscotch highlights, and those with cool skin tones look best with a caramel shade. Keep in mind that multitonal color is another option, which involves the application of tone-on-tone color.

Redheads look great with deeper red, brown or auburn lowlights woven throughout the hair. While golden highlights can be beautiful, they can often look garish on women with olive skin tones.

Silver hair looks best when accented with soft, pale butter-blond shades. Women with gray hair should also wash with a gray-specific shampoo once a week to counteract yellowing.

Natural black hair can be highlighted, but it's best to only lighten it to a light brown. Adding blonde hightlights to black hair can result in damaged, broken strands, since a significant amount of bleach is needed to achieve such a light shade.